Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: C+ | 48 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT His Heart Will Go On
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 12.08.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.With only two days remaining before Emily and Daniel say "I do," it's time for Revenge to start milking the rising tensions. Unfortunately, those tensions are about turgid as cooked spaghetti.
Of course, in backwards fashion, first comes love, then comes baby… that secures marriage; Daniel, however, isn't so keen on spreading the word about the bundle of joy. He keeps it out of his and Emily's Voulez profile as she feigns excitement over telling the world. Later, Daniel tells Sarah – who he still hasn't broken up with – that he just needs the engagement story to sell magazines. Small problem with that lie: the magazine hasn't even gone to print and the wedding is in two days, so by that logic he'd have to marry Emily and divorce her after the issue in order to be with Sarah. Sarah sees the flaws in this plan and jets.
At Grayson Manor, Lydia gives Emily a completely ridiculous push down the entryway stairs (with two witnesses, mind you) because slapping is just so cliché. Daniel rushes to Emily's side and announces that she's pregnant, which throws Victoria into conspiracy theory mode. This makes it easy to accuse V of sending the paparazzi after Emily at the OB/GYN, which also conveniently prevents Em from having to prove that she's pregnant and sets up a fight in which Daniel tells Victoria he's definitely marrying her arch-enemy. (Also: helpful for accusing Victoria of murder later.)
While all that is helping Em tie her plan up with a bow, Lydia is sewing seeds everywhere. Margaux wants secondary sources to corroborate Lydia's Conrad story (because M is a responsible journalist who doesn't take a solo, well-placed source's word as gospel), so she tries to trap Conrad into confessing on tape. It's a no-go and Aidan squeals to Margaux, who drops Lydia. With nowhere to live, Lydia tells Conrad she loves him, consummates the lie, and then sets up shop just in time for Conrad to wave a present under her nose. He brings out old photo albums to inspire his memoir and, in them, Lydia finds the photo of Emily as a cater waiter from a 2003 New Year's Eve party that Nolan once worked to destroy. Emily's secret identity may not be so safe and it's starting to make sense that someone will feel the need to shoot her on her wedding night.
That person won't likely be Charlotte, who's vowed to stop scheming after seeing what her little game did to Daniel. The poor guy loves Emily and Sarah and when Charlotte finds him running his favorite trail, he tells her how awful it is that he ran into Sarah right as everything in his life was perfect. The solution: Charlotte buys Emily a spa day and tells Victoria she's out.
Next, Margaux winds up dropping her Conrad story completely when Nolan tells her Jack is involved; Jack tells her what Conrad did and that she might be in danger too, and she agrees he's more important than a story. Aww.
Another (sort of) aww moment comes courtesy of Aidan, who proposes to Emily the night before her wedding, though it's looking like they might not be able to spend happily ever after together as planned.
And by episode's end, everything is infuriatingly perfect. Daniel returns to Em and tells her he broke it off with Sarah – moments before, he was dropping Sarah's necklace into the ocean like the old lady at the end of Titanic – and that they will be each other's rocks. Surely something is about to barge onto Emily's porch of doom and ruin everything.
Instead we get the prospect of Fumbles McGee (er, Lydia) using that catering photo to ruin Emily and a visit from Victoria, who says she won't attending Daniel's wedding. Oh no? The second danger is presumably a problem because it will be easier for V to give herself an alibi when Emily "dies," but that's not some unsolvable problem worthy of a sadistically soapy series like Revenge. Where do we file complaints about missing cliffhangers, ABC?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on a bridal photo shoot for the supposedly cutting edge, vibrant magazine Voulez for which Emily is trying on various gowns and posing for wedding photos that look like they belong in a Sears catalog. Daniel and Emily don’t seem to notice because they’re too busy not telling people Emily is "pregnant," per Daniel’s request. Emily feigns her bursting excitement, but Daniel seems unmoved by her performance for once in his life.
At that moment, Margaux is helping Lydia settle into her lush accommodations, but says she’s not running with the story Lydia told her until she’s got some secondary sources. You know, because Margaux is a responsible journalist who checks sources but has no qualms about paying off a source with a fancy hotel. (She didn’t give Lydia the diamonds she asked for, so she’s definitely exhibiting some restraint, right?) Lydia seems blindsided by this because she was apparently never required to read about Woodward and Bernstein’s contribution to American history.
And now that Victoria is certain her plan to break up Emily and Daniel is a done deal, it’s starting to unravel because Sarah is upset that Daniel is ignoring her. (You shoulda known, V.) The poor, emotionally abused dummy won’t break up with Sarah, even though Emily is "pregnant" and he probably should. Of course his reason for keeping the engagement going is that he needs to sell magazines. This logic is flawed because the wedding is in two days and the magazine doesn’t seem to have gone to print. Was he going to marry Emily and then divorce her once the magazine came out? And is he really so famous that his mug is the thing selling magazines? Sarah sees at least one of these problems and jets.
Despite what she thinks is an imminent victory, Victoria is still trying to get under Emily’s skin by commenting on her willingness to stay with Daniel after he cheated on her. Emily came prepared and drops pregnancy hints like Easter eggs all over her breakfast nook. That battle doesn’t last long because Emily notices clothes falling from Victoria’s balcony -- it’s Lydia, who’s having a Gatsby moment with her nemesis’ clothing while stealing an Emerald shift dress.
Naturally, we’re in for a classic Victoria snark-off. Lydia declares war on Victoria, but we’re sort of with Madame Grayson on this one: She did save Lydia from dying in a fiery plane crash. So what if she also banished her to serve drinks to tourists in Ecuador? That sounds like a pretty sweet gig that lets you get a tan in a place where you probably won’t be pushed off the balcony of a Manhattan apartment building. Of course, Lydia is upset that she was banished while Victoria played "the Queen of New York." Let’s see, dying much like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (only with more debris), or hanging out in Ecuador away from people who kill each other over real estate and ego? Yeah, still not catching the part where Victoria’s deal to save her life was a bad thing.